Upload your artwork and instantly flip it horizontally or vertically, toggle grayscale to check values, and use a grid overlay to verify proportions. A free browser-based mirror tool for artists – no download, no sign-up required.

 Why Every Artist Needs a Mirror Check

 Break the Blindness You Don't Know You Have

When you work on a drawing or painting for a long time, your brain starts filling in what it expects to see rather than what is actually there. Wonky anatomy, a leaning pose, uneven eyes – your mind compensates and hides these errors from you.

Flipping your canvas is one of the oldest and most reliable tricks in the artist's toolkit. The mirrored image forces your visual cortex to process it as a completely fresh image, making every mistake immediately visible. Professional illustrators, portrait painters, and concept artists use this technique daily – and now you can do it in seconds with any image directly in your browser.

Values Are the Foundation of Every Great Painting

Color is often a distraction from what really makes a painting work: the balance of light and dark. By switching to grayscale, you strip away hue and see your artwork the way a viewer sees it from a distance – as contrasts, silhouettes, and shapes. If your painting reads well in black and white, it will read well in color. If it looks flat in grayscale, it needs more contrast regardless of how beautiful the colors are.

This is a core technique used in watercolor painting, oil painting, and digital art alike.

What the Artist's Mirror Can Do

 Horizontal Flip

The classic mirror check. Instantly reverses your image left to right, exposing asymmetry in faces, leaning figures, and unbalanced compositions that are nearly impossible to spot when working in one direction only.

Vertical Flip

Turns your image upside down – a powerful way to check the overall weight and balance of a composition and spot perspective issues that stay hidden in the normal orientation.

Grayscale Toggle

One click converts your image to black and white so you can evaluate your value structure without the distraction of color. Essential for watercolor artists, oil painters, and anyone working in Procreate, Photoshop, or other digital tools who wants to verify their lighting before committing to a final piece.

Grid Overlay

A clean, non-distracting grid placed over your image to help you verify that facial features align, proportions are consistent, and your composition follows the rules of thirds or golden ratio. Useful for portrait drawing, figure work, and any subject where accurate placement matters.

 Download

Save the flipped or grayscale version as a PNG to keep as a reference copy alongside your drawing software or to print and work from directly.

 Complete Privacy

Your images never leave your device. Everything is processed entirely in your browser with no server uploads, no storage, and no data collection. Your work in progress stays yours.

How to Use the Artist's Mirror

Step one – Upload your image

Click the upload area or drag and drop any JPG, PNG, or WebP file directly from your phone or computer. Works with sketches, paintings, photographs, and digital artwork from any software including Procreate, Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, and Krita.

Step two – Analyze your work

Use the flip buttons to mirror your image horizontally or vertically. Toggle grayscale to check your values. Enable the grid overlay to verify proportions and alignment.

Step three – Go back and fix it

Return to your drawing software, correct the errors the mirror check revealed, and re-upload to confirm the improvements. Repeat as many times as needed.

Step four – Download if needed

Save the mirrored or grayscale version as a PNG reference image to keep open side by side with your canvas.

 Who Is This Tool For?

The Artist's Mirror is useful for anyone who draws or paints from reference or from imagination – at any skill level.

It is particularly valuable for portrait artists who need to check facial symmetry and proportions, for figure and life drawing where anatomy and balance are critical, and for watercolor and oil painters who want to evaluate their value structure before adding more paint. Digital artists working in Procreate or Photoshop can use it as a quick second opinion outside their main application, and art teachers can use it as a visual teaching aid to show students how the mirror check works in practice.

If you have ever stared at a drawing and felt something was slightly off but could not identify what – this tool will show you immediately.

Free to Use – Always

The Artist's Mirror is completely free and part of Konstlabbet, a growing collection of free tools for artists at akvarellskiss.se. No account needed, no watermarks, no limitations. Upload, analyze, and download as many times as you like.

Because everything runs directly in your browser, the tool works equally well on your phone as on your desktop computer.